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About Wave

One of TheNew York Times‘s 10 Best Books of the Year, a Christian Science Monitor Best Nonfiction Book, a Newsday Top 10 Books pick, a People magazine Top 10 pick, a Good Reads Best Book of the Year, and a Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book

A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist

In 2004, at a beach resort on the coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala and her family—parents, husband, sons—were swept away by a tsunami. Only Sonali survived to tell their tale. This is her account of the nearly incomprehensible event and its aftermath.

About Wave

One of TheNew York Times Book Review‘s 10 Best Books of the Year

On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny; and then, over the ensuing years, as she emerges reluctantly, slowly allowing her memory to take her back through the rich and joyous life she’s mourning, from her family’s home in London, to the birth of her children, to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge, to her childhood in Colombo; all the while learning the difficult balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family, somehow, still alive within her.

About Wave

One of TheNew York Times Book Review‘s 10 Best Books of the Year

On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny; and then, over the ensuing years, as she emerges reluctantly, slowly allowing her memory to take her back through the rich and joyous life she’s mourning, from her family’s home in London, to the birth of her children, to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge, to her childhood in Colombo; all the while learning the difficult balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family, somehow, still alive within her.

From the Hardcover edition.

About Wave

One of TheNew York Times Book Review‘s 10 Best Books of the Year

On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny; and then, over the ensuing years, as she emerges reluctantly, slowly allowing her memory to take her back through the rich and joyous life she’s mourning, from her family’s home in London, to the birth of her children, to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge, to her childhood in Colombo; all the while learning the difficult balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family, somehow, still alive within her.

From the Hardcover edition.

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Awards

National Book Critics Circle AwardsFINALIST 2013

Praise

“The most powerful and haunting book I have read in years.” —Michael Ondaatje

“Unforgettable. . . . The most exceptional book about grief I’ve ever read. . . . [Deraniyagala] has fearlessly delivered on memoir’s greatest promise: to tell it like it is, no matter the cost. . . . As unsparing as they come, but also defiantly flooded with light. . . . Extraordinary.” —Cheryl Strayed, The New York Times Book Review

“Unforgettable . . . It is a miracle Deraniyagala lived. The fact that she could write such a memoir, bringing those she loved to life so completely that they breathe on the page, is itself a miracle.” —Vanity Fair

“Out of unimaginable loss comes an unimaginably powerful book. . . . I urge you to read Wave. You will not be the same person after you’ve finished.” —Will Schwalbe

“Vivid. . . . What emerges from this wizardry most clearly is, of course, Deraniyagala herself—carrying within her present life another gorgeously remembered one.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“An amazing, beautiful book.” —Joan Didion

“Stories of grief, like stories of love, are of permanent literary interest when done well. . . . Greatness reverberates from [Deraniyagala’s] simple and supple prose.” —The New York Times

“Turns revealing into art as powerful as a planetary vibration.” —The Plain Dealer

“Both heartbreaking and astonishingly beautiful.” —New York Post

“[Deraniyagala’s family] spring from these pages with an exuberance and dimensionality that lifts Wave from memoir into some virtual realm of documentation.” —The Boston Globe

“[A] quiet memoir of torturous loss. . . . Deraniyagala tours memories of her young family’s history with artistry.” —The New Yorker

“Radiant. . . . The extremity of Deraniyagala’s story seizes the attention, but it’s the beauty of how she expresses it that makes it indelible. . . . [She is] a writer of such extraordinary gifts. . . . Wave is a small, slender book, but it is enormous on the inside.” —Salon

About Sonali Deraniyagala

Sonali Deraniyagala teaches in the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is currently a visiting research scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, New York, working… More about Sonali Deraniyagala

About Sonali Deraniyagala

Sonali Deraniyagala teaches in the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is currently a visiting research scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, New York, working… More about Sonali Deraniyagala

About Sonali Deraniyagala

Sonali Deraniyagala teaches in the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is currently a visiting research scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, New York, working… More about Sonali Deraniyagala

About Sonali Deraniyagala

Sonali Deraniyagala teaches in the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is currently a visiting research scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, New York, working… More about Sonali Deraniyagala